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### Viewing cable 07AUCKLAND118, LOCAL ELECTIONS IN AUCKLAND - LITTLE ADO ABOUT NOTHING

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Reference ID | Created | Released | Classification | Origin
--- | --- | --- | --- | ---
07AUCKLAND118 | 2007-10-12 02:15 | 2011-04-28 00:00 | UNCLASSIFIED//FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY | Consulate Auckland

`

    VZCZCXRO7541
    RR RUEHNZ
    DE RUEHNZ #0118/01 2850215
    ZNR UUUUU ZZH
    R 120215Z OCT 07
    FM AMCONSUL AUCKLAND
    TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC 0483
    INFO RUEHWL/AMEMBASSY WELLINGTON 0374
    RUEHNZ/AMCONSUL AUCKLAND 0707

` `

    UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 02 AUCKLAND 000118

    SIPDIS

    SENSITIVE
    SIPDIS

    FOR EAP/ANP

    E.O. 12958: N/A
    TAGS: PGOV NZ
    SUBJECT: LOCAL ELECTIONS IN AUCKLAND - LITTLE ADO ABOUT NOTHING

    This message is sensitive but unclassified, please protect
    accordingly.

    ¶1.  (SBU) Summary.  Towns and cities across New Zealand are
    voting for new mayors and council members.  The vote - even that
    in New Zealand's biggest city - will have little impact on
    national politics.  The issues are pedestrian and the voters
    apathetic.  New Zealand's future leadership is not incubated in
    local politics but in the major parties' youth organizations and
    parliament's back benches.  Local politics is dominated by
    national figures who have stepped away from Wellington politics
    and by local civic boosters who, while often passionate about
    their home towns, have no national ambitions.  End summary.

    ¶2.  (SBU) New Zealand's commercial center and largest
    metropolitan area (home to about 1.3 million of New Zealand's
    4.2 million people) is an awkward amalgam of four cities and
    portions of three neighboring districts plus an overarching
    regional council headed by an indirectly elected chair.
    Responsibilities overlap and officials compete; clashes are
    common among the four mayors, one chairman, and eight councils.

    ¶3.  (SBU) While polls show that the residents of Auckland City
    (the largest of the four cities that makes up the metro area)
    strongly support the consolidation of all the above entities
    into a single city council, that is one issue that will not be
    addressed at the polls.  No significant candidate has come out
    clearly in favor of the proposal (no surprise, as consolidation
    would mean three of the four mayors lose their jobs), and there
    are no plans for a referendum.  Instead, Wellington has
    appointed a royal commission to tackle the problem, effectively
    postponing any changes until after next year's national
    elections.

    ¶4.  (SBU) With the future structure of Auckland governance off
    the table, the campaigns have largely focused on the competence
    of incumbents, property taxes, transportation, and the growing
    cost of local government.  In Auckland City, for example,
    property taxes rose 21% over the last three years and are
    expected to rise another 37% over the next three.  The size of
    the staff of Manukau City, one of the four cities in the
    Auckland area, has grown 35% over six years.  Widespread public
    grumbling over these issues has not generated a voter revolt,
    however.  Two of the four incumbent mayors in the Auckland area
    look likely to be reelected comfortably.  A third has retired;
    the race to replace him is too close to call.  In general, local
    officials countrywide are coasting to easy reelection.

    ¶5.  (SBU) Only Auckland City Mayor Dick Hubbard, a breakfast
    cereal maker in his first term in office, looks likely to be
    ousted.  Hubbard pressed hard for the construction of a
    world-class stadium on the Auckland waterfront in time for the
    2011 Rugby World Cup, but lost.  He also was hurt by accusations
    that he and the rest of the city council arranged a stealth tax
    increase by raising the city-owned water company's rates and
    steering the profits into the treasury.  A controversial upgrade
    of Auckland's main street did not help.  Hubbard is expected to
    be ousted by John Banks, his predecessor and a former National
    Party MP and minister.

    ¶6.  (SBU) There is strikingly little intersection between
    national and local politics on the party level.  Candidates for
    local office do not run under the banner of national parties.
    There are, strictly speaking, no Labour or National Party
    candidates for local office.  Rather, local candidates run under
    banners loosely affiliated with national parties.  (In Auckland,
    Labour Party candidates run under the "City Vision" ticket,
    while National Party affiliates run as "Citizens and Ratepayers"
    candidates.)  The national parties do not endorse candidates,
    and local elections are generally not taken as a bellwether of
    national politics.  One veteran of local politics explained that
    there is great resistance, not only in Auckland, but in cities
    around the country, to the idea of Wellington politics
    influencing local government.  Local politicians are expected to
    put local interests above all else, in a non-partisan way.  Were
    the prime minister, for example, to publicly endorse Dick
    Hubbard, it would be detrimental to both.  The PM would be
    perceived as interfering in local issues while Hubbard would be
    portrayed as accountable to the Labour Party rather than to
    Auckland's voters.

    ¶7.  (SBU) Comment.  All of the above means that voters in local
    elections cannot vote on the most important issue facing
    Auckland (the structure of government) nor can they make a
    statement about national politics in casting their local vote.
    Thus local elections are limited to issues like property taxes
    and public transport.  Perhaps not surprisingly, voter interest
    is low.  Some candidate fora have been attended by more
    candidates than voters.  Turnout so far (balloting is by mail,
    with a deadline of October 13), is much lower than elections at

    AUCKLAND 00000118  002 OF 002

    the national level and generally lower than during the last
    local elections in 2004.  National elections see close to 80%
    turnout, while turnout in the various districts of the current
    Auckland elections ranges from 24% to 37%.  It would probably
    take a substantial change in Auckland's structure of government
    - the creation of a single "super city" - to get the area's
    voters enthused about local elections.
    DESROCHER

`